Minutes of Asha Seattle meeting on 02/13/08

Venue : RTC LWSD No 414, Sammamish B Room, Redmond, WA

Attendees: Vijay, Harish, Srijan, Prashant, Sri, Megha, Barathi, Deb, Swati, Pooja, Vinayak, Nagendra (new volunteer), Bansal (new volunteer), Kavita, Sailesh, Arvind, Eera, Jay, Binay, Ravi, Aparajita, Palani, Mani.

Muskaan Site Visit report – Presented by Deb

Muskaan is supported by Asha Seattle since 2005. Deb's 2nd site visit after her first one during Dec 2005. Site visit report at http://www.ashanet.org/projects-new/documents/267/2007.Site.Visit.Report.by.Deb.Kukreja

  • Generally positive growth between the two site visits: eg. support for 400 children during 2005 has become 550 children and their families now 
  • Main improvement seems to be in health awareness: Deb found that women are not as intimidated as they used to be in discussing health matters.
  • Learning component of the project has also worked better. 3 girls are in 12th standard, would be interesting to see how their career prospects turn out.
  • Income generation programs are currently not promising, despite some initial efforts by Jitendra (a person hired to monitor income generation activities). eg. Jhadus made by Ganganagar families are not able to compete against cheaper, roughly similar quality, jhadus in the market made by workers who are not fairly paid; inconsistent demand for paper bags.
  • Due to the large number of families, the significant progress achieved in terms of health awareness and learning might seem diluted.
  • Questions with Deb's answers:
    • Barathi: Are they trying to target the jhadus or paper bags to any particular organization or business?
      • They are in the phase of trying to find markets, say among NGOs. 
    • Shailesh: Is Jitendra doing everything related to income generation?
      • He also gets help from Shivani.
    • Srijan: What is their primary occupation?
      • Go through garbage and sell material; Some men load/unload boxes; Women mostly at home.
    • Megha: What % of their funding is supported by Asha? And which aspects of the project are funded?
      • Less than half, but not sure. Mainly health care (eg. midday meals) and income generation programs (like salary of Jitendra), but not sure again.
    • Megha: Are there efforts to get the women through primary school?
      • Not clear about it, but here is a related answer. Some women identified as health workers are educated about nutrition, disease symptoms, etc., and they use this knowledge to monitor the health of other women.

Project Coordinators’ update – Presented by Shailesh & Hareesh

  • Start filing cheque requests - starting 6 weeks prior to actual need of the money is recommended. If 6 weeks is not possible for some reason, try at least 3/4 weeks prior.
  • Bank doesn't charge any fee on 3000$ transfer per day. So earlier the cheques are filed, the better we can use this feature.
  • Megha: How does the bank transfer the money to the organization?
    • The bank (ICICI) might do some batching of money that is sent 3000$ per day, and send the pooled money as a cheque directly to the beneficiary organization. There is no Asha account in India that serves as an intermediate store for the money.
  • Decision made to read out all projects without site visits before Jan 2007, in every chapter meeting. Contact Hareesh for this week's list, and the geographic locations of these projects.
  • Another decision made to enforce that in every meeting, at least one project is picked and given an update on. It could be a general introduction to the project, or a recent site visit report. Megha volunteered to do it for the next week.
  • Call for Asha Seattle Website Developer. Hareesh to prepare a job description (eg. ASP skills for internal technical maintenance, development or testing, etc.), and send it to Megha and Sree, who would forward it to interested people.

Chapter Updates  - Presented by Deb, Binay & Srijan

  • Choosing Asha-wide projects for showcasing in Work An Hour program (WAH)
    • Deb: Choose 3/4 projects to highlight Asha-wide; Feb 20 is the deadline to getting involved.
    • Binay: One of the few events in which many Asha chapters decide on which projects to choose.
    • Srijan: Much more than 3/4 projects could be showcased; any chapter can suggest their projects; General Asha pool can also match funds with funds raised by individual chapters.  
  • Workshop - Mar 2nd; need ideas. Generally fun, watch documentary, brainstorming and learning, lunch you pay for. Try not to discuss Asha organizational matters, since AID is also involved. Everyone is welcome, but publicized much to avoid too much turnout, which might lead to logistic issues in arranging for food etc.

 

Site Visit and Integrity-check protocols

  • If an organization has many activities, then the first site visit could cover all of them, but focus more on activities that Asha Seattle is funding.
    • Megha: In one of her projects, she checked many activities besides the one Seattle is funding to get an overall idea of the integrity of the organization.
    • Srijan: Technically, each separate funded activity needs a separate site visit (if they are really different activities).
    • Sailesh: First site visit is very important, so should be done by experienced people who have done site visits before.
    • Binay: If the activity is totally new, then you find out the context of the people i.e., their demography, income sources, livelihood, etc., in the site visit.
  • We ask the organization's accounts for sure! Eg. annual budget + Foreign Currency (FC) audit reports. FC reports are prepared by the organization, but they mostly require external CA review.
  • For recurring projects, we initially decide on funding only for one year, with the prospect that we would like to work with them for more years. The decision to provide funds for the next year is made after performance in the first year.
  • Swati: Communicate to the organization the bigger picture of how other organizations also have unsatisfied needs, and hence show them how important it is for them to provide the best information to convince not just the person doing the site visit, but everyone in the Seattle chapter.
  • Site visit questionnaire and guidelines are available (possibly in Asha website). Build on top of available questionnaire as template, and customize.

 

Project proposal presentation for Janaseva Mandal - Presented by Jay

  • Janaseva Mandal is a fairly old organization based in Maharashtra, directed by Fr. Godfrey D'lima.
  • Vinayak met Godfrey in Pune and learnt about the organization. Jayashree also knows him.
  • Godfrey has connections to the learning network, as he has created quite good books for non-formal educational courses. He is a Jesuit priest with probably a M.Com education.
  • Asha Zurich supported one of Janaseva Mandal activities before, and is likely still involved.
  • Main components of the project
    • Of the many (7) project components proposed by Godfrey, 3 non-urgent ones were selected and presented by Jay during this meeting.
    • Jay would be primary steward, and Kavita, Gaurav and Vinayak would be secondary/additional stewards.
    • Please see "http://groups.yahoo.com/group/asha-seattle/files/Unfunded_Projects/JanasevaMandal.ppt" for more information on these proposed project components:
      1. Scholarship for 100 adivasi boarders.
      2. Tutors for the above boarders - Rs. 2000/month.
        • To Narendra's questions about the background of this project, Jay mentioned that the project benefits Adivasis in Nandurbar, Maharashtra, currently 50 of them. Narendra asked about the population of the village to find out what fraction of the population benefit. Narendra also asked about about Janaseva mandal's overall budget, and what fraction of that is being asked from Asha Seattle. Jay might answer these questions during the next presentation.
      3. Supporting a campaign of organic farming and veterinary health.
  • Might need recurring funding.
  • Need a more formal request report for the 3 project components (Srijan)
  • Other project components for one-time funding:
    • Solar lanterns for 100 boarders, and 20 learning centres
      • Harish's questions: Is electricity expensive in the area? Are the solar lanterns sustainable? If the answer is negative for both, then traditional forms of electricity probably make more sense).
      • AID has some low-budget solar lantern (Sree), and there might be models with battery charging options (Srijan).

CMS Site Visit report – Presented by Swati

  • Swati's visit during Sep 2007. CMS is with Asha since 1994, and is Seattle chapter's longest project. It has grown significantly over the years and comprises many activities such as 40+ Early Childhood Education (ECE) centers located in several villages, special schools for boys and girls, boys and girls homes, schools SSB and SBB, and health care programs.
  • Positives: 
    • Asha has complete and total access to the organization (transparency)
    • Growth of CMS. Main reason for this is less reliance on external support. For instance, youth forums require very little external support and self-help groups are about to become a co-operative forum of their own.
    • None of the ECE centers knew Swati was visiting. One such school was over during the visit, and Swati could see that the students were still sticking around having fun.
  • Room for improvement:
    • One of the schools had worst teacher to student ratio  & space problem (please see site visit report for details).
    • The boys in the Boys Home (8 yr old program serving boys from ~6 years to ~18 years) don't get as much nurturing as the girls in the Girls Home, probably because of non-motivated tutors. So the boys don't develop a sense of belonging to the community. Amol Nayek, director of CMS agrees that this is a problem, but do not know how to solve it.
  • School SSB visit:
    • Formal school in a very remote place.
    • Teachers' training has had a good effect (eg. interactive teaching in a limited space). Swati could examine the children's notebooks.
    • Community ownership is good, because land is donated by members there.
    • Right now, the plan is to take the school till 8th std.
    • Problem: very low number of female teachers (only one).
  • School SBB visit
    • Teachers are well-qualified, but they are not part of the community. So they view it as a job and do not have a sense of CMS spirit or belonging.
  • Summary:
    • CMS is an example of an organization where Asha can influence them to become more accountable and transparent. For instance, structured way of functioning is kind-of missing within CMS as a whole, since people at the top make most of the decisions. However for Asha-funded projects, we get funding estimates, news, etc., directly from the ECEs or other centers within CMS.
    • Swati has become so involved with the project that she has decided to move to India for good to work with CMS, with a main focus on improving CMS's process and structure.
    • Please refer to site visit report (to be posted in the project page: http://www.ashanet.org/projects/project-view.php?p=43) for more details on summary here, and also on the Special school new project, and health care status (which was similar to last site visit report).

 

 

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